


A Real Boy

by itsnotbleak



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 03:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14845070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsnotbleak/pseuds/itsnotbleak
Summary: It took the Winter Soldier three weeks to remember that human beings needed to sleep and eat.It took Steve far too long to realise the Winter Soldier was sleeping in his bed.





	A Real Boy

**Author's Note:**

> It was a long weekend here and instead of doing any of the things I meant to do, I dug up this ancient WIP and finished it.
> 
> I know, I know, we've all moved on from Winter Soldier recovery fics. But have we really?

It took the Winter Soldier three weeks to remember that human beings needed to sleep and eat. When he did, he almost felt pleased about how many times he’d almost fainted. It showed he might be a real human after all.

It was, however, highly inconvenient, so he found a fast food joint and ordered himself a burger and fries. And then threw it all up in the dumpster outside. Clearly being a real human was more difficult than it looked.

He slumped against the wall and thought hard. He needed to eat, but he couldn’t. Suddenly, an image appeared in his head of a metal tin filled with soda crackers and a voice (was it his own?) saying, ‘here Stevie, see if you can keep some of these down.’

He had no idea where the memory, if that was what it was, came from, but he picked himself up and headed to the store on the corner to buy some damn crackers. He ate one cautiously, and then, when he hadn’t had any urge to vomit after five minutes, another three. An hour later he’d managed to eat the entire box and was filled with smug satisfaction. “Look, I’m a real boy,” he muttered.

Sleep proved more difficult. He found a spot up in the top of an unfinished apartment building, sat himself down with his back to the wall and tried to remember how to do it. He was pretty sure you had to close your eyes and relax, but closing his eyes just put him on edge, and he could only manage about thirty seconds before he had to snap them open again and scan the perimeter. Eventually sheer exhaustion allowed him about an hour of nodding off and then waking again as his chin sunk to his chest.

He racked his swiss cheese of a brain for clues as to where he was going wrong, but this time all it could come up with was an image of a small blond head on a pillow smiling sweetly up at him. Fucking useless.

By the end of the week he’d graduated to crackers with cheese and certain types of fruit (plums, pears, bananas GOOD; kiwi, pineapple, orange BAD) but sleep remained fitful and largely elusive; the longest he’d managed without waking was a terribly inadequate seven minutes and thirty-four seconds.

He had identified the blond as TheMissionCaptainAmericaSTEVE. The logical part of his brain told him the head was too small, but the other part, the part that was always coming up with shit that didn’t make sense, was resolute. The head belonged to Steven Grant Rogers, alias ‘Dollface’.

Well, the Soldier knew where CaptainAmericaSteveTHEMISSION lived. He’d kept tabs on him, although whether that was because he was the Mission or some other reason the Soldier couldn’t say. He watched the Mission go for his morning run, he watched the Mission buy his groceries, he watched the Mission pace relentlessly around the living room of his apartment.

He hadn’t yet watched the Mission sleep.

That night he scaled the Mission’s fire escape and peered in through his bedroom window. TheMissionCaptainAmericaSTEVE was asleep inside. He made it look so easy, the bastard, stretched out on his back and snoring softly.

The Soldier watched him carefully, silently. After three minutes and forty-seven seconds, Steve rolled over and, as he did so, his blanket slipped, exposing part of his torso.

The Soldier stared. The crazy part of his brain, the part that tried to tell him SteveTHEMISSION was his friend, and yesterday in the store had suggested that peanut butter and jelly might make a good sandwich, was now telling him that it was imperative that the Soldier climb in and fix the Mission’s blanket. The Soldier ignored it. His brain was swiss cheese, and the part that came up with this shit was definitely more hole than cheese.

Thirty-nine seconds passed.

The Soldier climbed in through Steve’s bedroom window, cursing silently to himself.

He pulled the comforter up, over Steve’s shoulder, so none of him was exposed to the cold. Steve didn’t stir, snoring blithely on. It was kind of cute, the snoring. Like a puppy. Not that the Soldier knew any puppies.

GET IN THE BED, said his goddamn crazy swiss-cheese of a brain. THAT’S HOW YOU SLEEP, GET IN THE BED. Are you nuts, thought the Soldier. Do you want SteveTheMissionCAPTAINAMERICA to catch you?

His goddamn crazy swiss-cheese of a brain didn’t answer, just continued to emote warmly about the bed.

The Soldier was so tired. He wanted to sleep more than he had wanted anything else in his whole two months of memories. He wanted to lie down on the fucking bed.

He sat, gingerly, on the edge. Steve snuffled, but otherwise didn’t stir.

There was no way he was a lighter sleeper than the Soldier. Past evidence suggested it was highly improbable that the Soldier would sleep at all. Probably not a real human after all. What could be the harm in lying down and closing his eyes for a minute?

He eased back and started to swing his feet up before stopping abruptly. Some kind of internal programming was preventing him, objecting to the sight of his boots.

No shoes on the bed.

It didn’t _feel_ like Hydra programming. Hydra programming felt BAD, sent shudders down his spine and stole his breath away and made his brain HURT. This didn’t feel like that. It was just a clear, calm, absolute sense of wrongness.

The Soldier glanced at Steve, and saw the very tips of his bare toes peeking out from the bottom of the comforter. Had Steve programmed him?

No, said the brain. It was someone called ‘Ma’. His brain supplied him with a memory (?) of a short, middle-aged woman with frizzy brown hair scolding, ‘Get your dirty boots off my furniture, James Buchanan Barnes, or you’ll be cleaning up the fecking mud.'

The Soldier didn’t know who James Buchanan Barnes was, but he leaned down and unlaced his boots. It wasn’t like he couldn’t easily make a getaway in bare feet if necessary.

Finally, he lay back on the bed, keeping a careful distance between him and Steve. He closed his eyes.

He opened them again. The clock on Steve’s bedside table informed him that four hours and eighteen minutes had passed. Steve was still asleep but had rolled closer, his body snug against the Soldier, separated only by the blanket

The Soldier was very warm. Cosy, suggested his brain. Steve smelt clean, like soap. It was good. The Soldier didn’t smell clean.

He extracted himself gently from the bed, retrieved his shoes and dived out the window.

He felt flush with success. He’d figured out this sleeping thing now. Lie down on a bed. Take shoes off. Sleep for hours. Easy.

Maybe the crazy part of his brain knew more than he gave it credit for. He decided to reward it with one of those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was delicious. He didn’t vomit.

Things were really looking up for the Winter Soldier.

—

Now that he knew how to do it, the Soldier prepared to sleep again that night. He’d discovered that real humans slept every single night, which seemed excessive, but it wasn’t exactly like he had anything better to do.

He found an old abandoned mattress with only a couple of springs sticking out. He rolled up an old sweater he’d found in a free bin outside a charity shop to make a pillow. He took his boots off.

He did not sleep.

His eyes wouldn’t rest, kept flicking open and darting from side to side. His makeshift bed was uncomfortable and lumpy and he felt exposed, lying down. Anyone could creep up on him from almost any direction. He lay on the mattress for two minutes and twenty-three seconds before his breathing started coming out in heavy, panicked gasps. He spent the rest of the night sitting cross-legged on the mattress, back flat against the wall, his rifle slung across his lap, eyes wide.

It’s Steve, his brain said, as the sun finally began to rise. He’s what’s missing.

You would say that, the Soldier thought. You think SteveTheMissionCAPTAINAMERICA is the answer to everything.

It’s only logical, reasoned his goddamn-swiss-cheese-with-a-hidden-flair-for-sandwich-design brain. Last night Steve was here, and you slept. Now he’s not and you can’t. What else has changed?

Literally everything, thought the Soldier, darkly eying one of the mattress’s busted springs. But he was starting to believe that the part of his brain that was adventurous with sandwiches and capable of even imagining a ‘Ma’ knew more about being a real human than the part that could figure out the best way to kill a man in seconds, so he made his way back to Steve’s apartment.

This time he couldn’t make himself cross the threshold. You’re gross, his brain informed him. You stink. You spent yesterday dumpster diving for a mattress and you’ve got blood and peanut butter under your fingernails. You can’t get into Steve’s bed until you’ve had a wash.

The Soldier remembered Steve’s clean soap smell and decided that was probably fair enough. But how the hell am I supposed to wash? he thought.

Steve has a bathroom, his brain informed him.

I fucking know, he thought. Got hot water and everything, all to himself. Moneybags Rogers. The Soldier didn’t know why a bathroom of one’s own should seem like such a luxury, just that it _did_.

I can’t _use_ it. He might wake up. He won’t, said his brain. He _might_.

The Soldier engaged in a small battle of wills with his own fucking brain, which couldn’t even really remember who Steve was, but was still somehow adamant that he was at least partially deaf and would sleep through almost anything. The Soldier was fairly certain that information was outdated.

In the end, he came to an agreement with himself. He’d wait until the morning, and then break in and wash once Steve left for the day. In the meantime, he sat out on Steve’s fire escape, watching over him like those stone gargoyles they had on the churches back… somewhere. Somewhere he’d been they had gargoyles that watched, silent and unmoving. That was him now. Made of stone.

The Soldier couldn’t claim to be an expert after his four hours’ experience, but Steve’s sleeping didn’t seem quite so impressive tonight. He seemed less peaceful, instead restlessly tossing and turning.

The Soldier resisted the urge to climb in and check Steve for signs of a fever (your hands are gross, he reminded himself) and instead mulled over gargoyles. Could you be a real human if you were made of stone?

Then Steve cried out in his sleep and the Soldier didn’t feel like he was made of stone at all.

“No, Bucky, please,” Steve whimpered. The Soldier looked on helplessly, torn between his need to stay unnoticed and his bone-deep desire to go in there and save Steve from whatever horrors were playing out in his head.

His hands were on the windowsill ready to lift when Steve yelled out “Bucky!” and then woke with a start, panting and struggling for breath.

“Come on Stevie, breathe for me,” the Soldier muttered, willing Steve’s laboured breaths to ease. They did, slowly but surely. Once he was satisfied that Steve was okay, the Soldier ducked back down below the level of the window so he couldn’t be seen. He heard Steve climb out of bed and head to the kitchen for a glass of water, then settle back in bed. When he was fairly sure Steve had gone to sleep, he resumed his silent watch.

Steve didn’t seem to have any more bad dreams that night, but the incident had left the Soldier shaken and uneasy. ‘Bucky’ had been what TheMissionSteveCAPTAINAMERICA had called him that day on the bridge, and again on the helicarrier. Was the Soldier the source of his nightmares?

Steve left the house shortly after dawn for his morning run, then came back, had a shower and a smoothie and left again to meet Sam Wilson (alias THE FALCON) and the Black Widow for intelligence briefing (MISSION: FIND THE WINTER SOLDIER. The Soldier wasn’t particularly worried about their success given they were currently concentrating their search on Hydra bases in Eastern Europe).

Once the Soldier was satisfied that Steve had left for the day he slithered in through the bedroom window and went to run himself a bath.

While he waited for the tub to fill he thought some more about Steve’s dream. He’d yelled out Bucky, the name he’d called the Soldier. Did the Soldier think he was Bucky? He didn’t know. Being Bucky seemed like it might be bad, based on Steve’s dream last night. But then Steve had also said he was his friend once.

The logical part of his brain told him it only made sense that he would be the monster in Steve’s nightmares. But the crazy part of his brain was sure he had been Steve’s friend once, and pulled up all sorts of confusing images to prove its point; a small, child-sized Steve holding out half a candy bar, an adult Steve (still small) sitting next to him in the stands of a baseball game; Steve getting beat up, and jumping in so he’d have a man on his side; Steve, full-sized, appearing out of nowhere and picking him up off a table somewhere in the gloomy pits of hell.

Thinking about it made the Soldier’s brain hurt (all of it) so he decide it was best to just not, and instead focused on his current mission: get clean.

The bath was gradually filling with water. So far so good. He concentrated hard and tried to remember what else he remembered about personal hygiene. He knew it was vitally important he wash behind his ears — more programming from ‘Ma’ — but other than that nothing of significance was sparking. He knew soap was involved.

A quick scan confirmed the presence of a bar of soap to the side of the tub. All right then. How hard could it be?

The Soldier stripped off and stuck one foot in the bath. HOT. He pulled it out. Stuck his hand (the real one) in instead. Fine? The Soldier eyed the bath suspiciously, then his foot. His foot had turned slightly pink. He stuck the other one in the bath. Definitely too hot.

The Soldier cursed. Bad enough his damn brain couldn’t agree with itself half the time, now his fucking feet were arguing with his hand?

He ran a little more cold water. This time when he stuck his foot back in it was just right. Gingerly, he lowered the rest of himself into the water.

Jesus mary and joseph. That was… that was _heavenly_.

He lay there soaking for a bit, feeling as if his insides were slowly melting out into the bath. That sounded like it would be a bad feeling, but it wasn’t. He was one with the water. Was that a human feeling, he wondered? For once he didn’t really care. He was too comfortable.

After a while, he noticed the water beginning to cool and reached hurriedly for the soap. Logically he knew he could just add more hot, but something in his brain decreed that to be bad etiquette or wasteful or something; he didn’t understand but he didn’t argue, just picked up the soap.

Once it was in his hands he somehow knew what to do with it. He washed himself down, scrubbed carefully behind the ears, even soaped up his hair. By the time he was done the water was black and his skin was a pinkish colour he didn’t entirely recognise. As long as he could remember he’d been a lifeless shade of grey, but then, ‘as long as he could remember’ was a period of time so short it was statistically irrelevant.

He got out of the bath. He stood, dripping, by the side of the bath for a moment before noticing the rail of towels on the wall opposite. He reached for one, dried himself off, and wrapped it around his waist. He eyed his discarded clothing with dissatisfaction.

Now that he himself was clean there was no denying that his clothes were filthy. And they smelt. He didn’t want to put them back on. He left them where they lay (I’m not your maid, James, said Ma in his head) and padded back into Steve’s bedroom.

He found a pair of grey trackpants and a soft t-shirt the colour of the sky and put them on. Steve wouldn’t miss them, he reasoned.

The Soldier wandered around Steve’s apartment curiously. He’d never been inside before, just peered at it through a scope on the roof of the building opposite. He could tell it was a nice place, all shiny wooden floors and expensive looking furniture. His brain assured him something wasn’t quite right about it though, that there was something missing.

He snorted at that. Look who’s fucking talking, he told it. You’re missing so much you’re not even sure you’re real.

He paused by the mostly empty bookshelf and peered at the small handful of books which stood upright at one end. Some looked brand new: _A Concise History of the Twentieth Century,_ _Dealing with Grief, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for Dummies_ – the last two looked liked they’d never been so much as opened. Others, though, were older, their spines cracked with age. Several Agatha Christies, _The Big Sleep_ , _Macbeth_. A slim, tall volume on Monet’s water lilies that was so well read several pages were loose and the binding looked in danger of disintegrating. Carefully, the Soldier slid it out of its place on the shelf to look at it. It was achingly familiar. _He won it_ , his brain told him. _It was the school art prize and he won it_. How would you know, he thought, but he could see the small blond head again, this time with his brow furrowed in concentration and his tongue between his teeth, peering over the top of this exact book.

The Soldier put the book back and moved on. Feeling peckish, he rooted through Steve’s icebox. Re-frig-e-rator. He liked feeling peckish. It seemed particularly human somehow. He made himself a sandwich, cheese and pickle this time. He’d seen how much Steve ate; there was no way he was going to notice at couple of slices of bread missing. He sat down at the table by the window and looked out as he ate.

There was a tree outside, and a pair of sparrows flitting about. The sun was streaming in, and as he closed his eyes and tilted his face towards it he could feel its warmth wash over his skin. For the first time, sitting in the sun in soft clothes that smelt of Steve, he felt more human than not.

That night, after darkness had come and Steve had fallen asleep, snuffling quietly, the Soldier crept back into his room. This time, instead of settling down on top of the covers, he hesitated before lifting a corner and slipping between them. Steve let out a quiet sigh and rolled closer to him, and the Soldier found himself wanting to do the same, to close the gap completely. He didn’t, but he did let himself just watch Steve, unable to explain why the rise and fall of Steve’s chest was so fascinating, why it mattered so much to him. After counting 183 of Steve’s breaths, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Bucky woke up slowly, feeling cozy, Steve warm against his chest. He listened out for any sign of a rattle or a wheeze but Steve’s breaths came even and clear, with just the occasional gentle, puppy-like snore. Outside he could hear the sounds of the city just starting to wake up: birds singing, the milkman’s clang of bottles. Bucky didn’t want to get up, he wanted to stay here, safe in his cocoon with Steve forever. But he knew if he said that, Steve would just say ‘got to eat somehow Buck,’ and push him out of bed. He opened his eyes.

The Soldier blinked. What the hell was a milkman? he thought, and then he realized that he had 268 pounds of super-soldier draped on top of him. Strangely it wasn’t alarming as it should have been; it was _nice_ , which wasn’t a word he had much cause to use before.

Except then he caught sight of the clock on the bedside table, and the flashing red numbers told him he’d been asleep for six hours and twenty-three minutes. Unprecedented success, but no time to celebrate. SteveDollfaceCAPTAINAMERICA was due to get up for his run in seventeen minutes, and the Soldier was currently trapped underneath him.

Not to worry. The Soldier was fairly certain he was supposed to be some kind of tactical genius. Better than Captain America anyway, who ran into burning buildings and towards murderous assassins; who nosedived into the arctic and told bullies to watch their mouths.

He considered the problem carefully, and then, tentatively, wrapped his arms around the giant torso currently threatening to suffocate him. Steve snuffled slightly, but otherwise didn’t stir. The Soldier took a deep breath and rolled them both — as if they were fighting, but _gently_. Within moments, Steve was on his side, the Soldier wrapped around his back. Carefully, the Soldier edged away, pulling his arm out from underneath. Free.

Steve remained fast asleep, oblivious.

“You big lump,” said the Soldier. It sounded affectionate. Fond. He wasn’t previously aware he was capable of fondness. Sleep agreed with him, he decided. His brain felt less like swiss cheese, and more like… “American,” whispered the Soldier, with a chuckle.

Would you look at that. Seven hours of sleep and suddenly he was cracking jokes. He slipped out of Steve’s bed, picked up his boots and slid out the window. “See ya, dollface,” he said over his shoulder.

—

It took Steve far too long to realise the Winter Soldier was sleeping in his bed.

To be fair, he was a little distracted. Things were slightly shambolic after the whole helicarriers, Shield-is-Hydra thing. Both Steve’s boss and his best friend were supposed to be dead, and neither of them was, and it was causing a few complications for Steve.

The intel he had (thanks largely to Natasha), suggested that the Winter Soldier had headed back to Europe. Steve was itching to follow him, but he had a few loose ends to clean up stateside, what with, again, the whole Shield-is-Hydra thing. And also, there was the fact that they hadn’t actually narrowed down where in Europe particularly well. It still wouldn’t have stopped him, except—

“I don’t know what they let you get up to in the forties, Steve, but you can’t just go rampaging aimlessly across Europe,” said Natasha.

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Most of it’s not even a warzone any more. People would _notice_.”

So Steve was grounded, for the time being. And it was hard to concentrate on the little things at home when you thought the person you loved most in the world was lost on the other side of it, possibly in danger. So you could forgive him for not figuring out what was going on straight away.

Sure, he’d noticed that he was going through bread and cheese and milk at twice the speed of light, but that honestly wasn’t that different from usual. He couldn’t find his favourite sweatshirt, but then he found it, buried at the bottom of his laundry hamper. Every time he turned on his radio it was set, not to NPR like he was sure he’d left it, but a different music station — ‘golden oldies’, ‘hits of the eighties, nineties, and today’, something called the ‘top 40 countdown’ — which was weird, but not _sinister_. Episodes of ‘Baby Ballroom’ started appearing in the play queue of his television, but he figured it was just Natasha messing with him.

The one thing that did give him pause was that actually, despite everything that was going on, Steve was getting better sleep than he’d had in years. Since before the war, probably. Natasha had seen the circles under his eyes and said “take a chill pill”, and handed him a bottle of something called melatonin. It worked improbably well, which surprised Steve, and made feel slightly guilty — what was he doing, sleeping soundly in his bed, when Bucky was god knows where doing god knows what?

It wasn’t till Steve woke up, and the Winter Soldier was there, curled into him, metal arm slung across Steve’s torso, that he put it all together. It wasn’t the melatonin.

“Bucky?” said Steve, incredulous. The Winter Soldier let out a loud snore. Steve grinned. _Bucky_. He’d come home. Steve had known he would, eventually.

Steve didn’t want to wake Bucky and startle him, in case Bucky panicked and fled. So he lay there, incredibly still, listening to Bucky’s breathing, drawing in the scent of him, soaking up his warmth. Eventually he must have fallen back asleep, because when he awoke it was long past the usual time for his run, and Bucky was gone.

Steve didn’t think he’d dreamed him up. He fancied there was a rumple on the other side of the bed that made no sense otherwise; a lingering warmth and a whiff of some essential Bucky-ness. He’d really been there, Steve was sure of it.

Steve was careful not to change a thing about his routine after that. He still got up every morning for his run and made sure to be out of the house for a large part of the day; kept going back to Sam’s VA sessions and his own charity work at the children’s hospital; visited Peggy and tracked down Hydra and assembled as necessary. He even continued to meet with Natasha about the search for the Winter Soldier, even if he was pretty sure their current leads, all pointing to various locations in eastern Europe, were miles off.

But he made sure to stock his pantry with all Bucky’s favourite foods: apples and plums, pastrami and pickles and proper, thick slices of rye bread, mint chocolate ice cream and wheels of red licorice. He got some new things he thought Bucky might like to try too; smores poptarts and popping candy, cereal with marshmallows, oreos in more flavors than Steve thought possible. He enjoyed himself at the supermarket, trying to pick out all the foods of the future that might tickle Bucky’s fancy. Cake in a box, Mac ‘n’ cheese in a box, cheese in a can, raspberries, in _February_. He ate some of the raspberries himself, actually, and they were good.

He bought nice shampoo, and conditioner, and left it by the side of the bath. Natasha had looked askance when he’d said he washed his hair with soap; apparently that was no good these days. Steve didn’t care much, but Bucky would. The stuff he bought smelt like apples; it came specially recommended by the girl at the drugstore.

The last thing made Steve hesitate a little. He dithered on the sidewalk by the bodega on the corner for a full minute before heading in and buying a pack of cigarettes. After everything Bucky’d survived, a few smokes weren’t going to kill him. He left them on the kitchen table, opened, with three missing — not smoked, stuck down the garbage disposal — on the principle that Bucky was more likely to think he could get away with stealing them if he didn’t have to remove the cellophane himself. He needn’t have bothered; he got home and the entire packet was missing. Steve was probably imagining it, but he felt like there was a decided air of disapproval left hanging in its place.

“I didn’t smoke them,” Steve told his empty kitchen. “And even if I did, they won’t do me no harm. Don’t even make me cough anymore.”

Steve didn’t actually ever _see_ Bucky again, and so he should probably have been more concerned. Food was definitely disappearing from his apartment; if he didn’t have a deadly assassin lurking about, he had a ghost. Or very hungry mice. But his spare pillow smelt like apples and cigarette smoke. And he hadn’t had a nightmare in weeks.

—

The Soldier felt he was progressing well on Operation Real Human Being. He ate a wide variety of foodstuffs and slept eight hours a night, took a bath every day and hadn't killed anyone in two months.

His brain was still swiss cheese, but he felt like maybe some of the gaps were starting to close. Every now and then he’d stumble upon a new piece: pastrami on rye; whistling, a skill he didn't know he had; the satisfaction of getting his hair to look _just so_ ; the memory of gliding across a dance hall with a girl in his arms. The feeling of lying in bed with _Steve_ in his arms.

The Soldier didn’t really know what any of it meant, but he was beginning to feel like he might, one day. And key to it all, he was pretty sure, was CaptainAmericaPal _STEVIE_. And so he kept at it, even though he was fairly certain lying in bed with Steve in his arms was going to get him busted, sooner or later.

But actually, when it happened, it wasn’t the bed at all.

It was the goddamn sandwiches.

—

How it happened was this:

Steve had gone on some kind of mustard buying binge and there were five different kinds in the refrigerator (the Soldier loved the refrigerator. You could keep _ice cream_ in it). Obviously, the Soldier had do some kind of empirical assessment to see which kind went best with his pastrami.

He turned on the radio, made a face when a dry voice started talking about the situation in northern Uzbekistan, and twiddled the dial until he found some music. Then he lined up his mustard, pulled a butter knife from the drawer, flipped it in the air a few times — _the Soldier’s knife skills are unparalleled_ said a voice in his head; _damn straight_ , thought the Soldier right back — and got to work.

He bopped his head to the music as he assembled his lunch. _I’ll kick you outa my home if you don’t cut your hair_ sung the radio, and the Soldier felt he might understand the sentiment. ‘Ma’ had never disapproved of the Soldier’s hair, he was pretty sure (the Soldier’s hair was perfect) but she’d disapproved of other things. Girls, mostly, he thought.

The song reached its chorus, and somewhere between the second and fourth sandwiches his bopping had spread from his head to his shoulders to his hips. “You’ve got to FIGHT”, belted the Soldier, “for your RIGHT—” the Soldier flipped the knife from his right hand to his left, and then jumped in the air, spinning his whole body round. “TO—”

StevieDollfaceCAPTAINAMERICA was standing in front of him, leaning against the wall with an bemused expression on his face. “—Party,” finished the Soldier, lamely.

“Don’t stop on my account,” said Steve. “I’d never want to interfere with your partying.”

“I didn’t hear you come in,” said the Soldier. It was true; he’d been so caught up in the music and the mustard that he’d let his guard down. It was unbelievable, and — _unacceptable, the asset must be punished_ — except, the Soldier thought, quashing that brain spasm, it wasn’t really that big a deal. He was more than capable of incapacitating Captain America with just the butter knife in his hand, if he wanted. No harm, no foul.

And besides, he _didn’t_ want to. Steve was looking at him with wide eyes, and the Soldier might have been sleeping next to the guy for going on two months, but he hadn’t seen him with his eyes open in far too long. If he had, he might never have found the strength to leave in the morning. Sweet jesus, those baby blues were a _sight_. The Soldier felt like he was swimming in them, and he’d quite happily drown.

“Hey doll,” said the Soldier, with a hesitant smile. He reached over and turned the radio off. “Wanna sandwich?”

Steve _crumpled_. One second he was leaning against the wall and the next he was sliding heavily down onto the floor, an incomprehensible look on his face — anguish? Relief?

“Whoa,” said the Soldier, rushing over to the puddle of super soldier on the floor. He didn’t even use the butter knife, he thought, feeling slightly bewildered. “You okay, pal?”

The puddle grabbed at him, and the Soldier let it, and soon they were both huddled on the floor, tangled up together. Steve was holding on to him so tight it was hard to breath, but somehow the Soldier knew it wasn’t an attempt to incapacitate him.

After twenty-eight seconds, Steve let go and pulled back so he could stare a little. “Bucky,” he said, reaching out a hand to touch the Soldier’s cheek (NICE, thought his brain). “Is it really you?”

The Soldier considered this. Was he _really_ Bucky? Part of his brain still wasn’t sure he was real at all. But then, that part of his brain wasn’t sure of much, apart from how to dismantle a rifle in seconds and what thirty thousand volts felt like as it passed through your hippocampus. And the other part of his brain, the part he was coming to trust more and more, was screaming YES.

“Yeah, Stevie,” said Bucky. “It’s me.” He grinned. “I’m a real boy.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wasn't till I'd pretty much finished this that I realised I'd written a second fic mostly about Bucky Barnes making sandwiches. Sorry/not sorry.


End file.
